Fox News Channel

Fox News has one of the biggest and most influential megaphones in TV news. It uses this megaphone to amplify anti-Muslim alarmist threats and conspiracy theories on a regular basis. Virtually all the leading Islamophobia players have made recurring appearances on popular Fox News programs, such as “Hannity,” “The O’Reilly Factor,” and “Fox & Friends.” On these shows, players echo one another’s warnings and repeat with serious certainty the same threats they warned about on radio shows and in blogs, newspapers, online magazines, and more. The staple threats include: Muslims imposing Sharia in America, Muslims establishing a global caliphate, Muslims engaging in homegrown jihad, and Muslims infiltrating President Obama’s administration to promote dangerous Islamist agendas.

In response to the January 2015 attack on French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo, Shannon Bream, Fox News’ Supreme Court correspondent, called for blatant racial profiling: “That's my question about these guys. If we know they were speaking unaccented French and they had ski masks on, do we even know what color they were, what the tone of their skin was? I mean, what if they didn't look like typical bad guys? As we define them when we think about terror groups.” Jeanine Pirro, host of “Justice,” called Islam a “cancer” and described the Paris attacks as part of a “Christian genocide.” “We need to kill them, the radical Muslim terrorists hell-bent on killing us. You're in danger. I'm in danger. We're at war and this is not going to stop.”

The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute conducted a poll that found a strong correlation between holding erroneous views about Muslims and Islam and watching Fox News. Specifically, the poll found that Americans who most trust Fox News are more likely to believe that Muslims want to establish Sharia law, that Muslims have not done enough to oppose extremism, and that investigating Muslim extremism is a good idea.